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Hands of Sorrow Knight
D2 HOSK QUICK UP-TO-SPEED DOCUMENT This is a quick description of the Wc3 Reforged HoSK-style map to describe its planned differences and new features compared to the original HoSK. Prime design goals in short * Keep the same strategic creativity: Every game, you are put in a spot where you have to make new decisions to come out the best - from the hero picking process to item and passive choices. * Painless introduction for new players: HoSK’s biggest flaw is the one we have to work on the hardest. We HoSKers can all remember the typical pub games with 4 new guys leaving in the first 10 minutes. This project should be considered a failure if this still happens often. * Huge changes to the game’s “tempo” and its duration: Stomps in HoSK should literally last <25 minutes instead of 40-50. More-or-less even games are currently planned to stay at the huge length of 60-70 minutes. * Changes to early and mid-game: HoSK has a relative lack of strong map objectives while also having an early game which is a bit more boring compared to other good AoS maps. * More flavour to heroes: In short, Heroes should feel a tad more unique than they did in HoSK. * Keep the same feel of fights: In contrast to Dota/LoL/etc., fights in HoSK don’t typically have everything disappear in 5 seconds, and these kinds of engages should be kept. * Way more options to outplay people with micro (skillshots, great spellcast timings, using the surroundings/juking, etc.) * Increase spell, item, and passive diversity: Wc3 reforged editor features also bring more freedom to coding, which leads to new kinds of spells and passives! * Keep the philosophy of relatively weak CCs and, in turn, less fear into engaging in a fight (no poking sieges, kthx) * Fights should be small: Steer away from 5v5 fights, make the game encourage 2v2 or 3v3s at most, for the whole game long. 5v5 fights are too messy and would result in too bursty kills, in a game where we’re looking for a slower kind of fight. * Move away from the concept of snowballing-over-time. Players’ mistakes should cost more in the late game, not early game. Early-game mistakes should give the enemies an edge, but this edge should fade in importance over time. Heroes, Skills Basics Heroes and their leveling is close to HoSK, but there are differences. Heroes have: * 1 starting persistent passive (you don’t have to level it, it’s just already there), * 1 primary skil (5 levels), * 1 out of 25+ offense skills (5 levels), * 1 out of 25+ support skills (5 levels), * 2 out of 6+ ultimates (3 levels), * 5-6 passive points * 6 item slots, * 1 primary attribute. Player decisions * Pick hero, two abilities * L3: Open passive book 1, take Passive 1 * L5: Ulti 1 * L7: Passive 2 * L9: Passive 3 * L11: Ulti 2 * L13: Passive 4 * L15: Passive 5 * L17: ? * L19: Passive 6 * L21: Big end-game boost In Hero Selection, you again select your hero, offense/support. Leveling is changed: Primary/Offense/Support/Ultimate spells are leveled up on each hero level up. You DO NOT put points into them, their damage simply scales through levels. 21 is your max level. So, getting up a single level will twice as much time as it did in HoSK (L50 vs L21). Passive points are separated from Ability points. There are 5 of them; you simply pick a passive by selecting it. You get one passive point approximately every 4 levels. Your passive choices are displayed in HUD just like your items. Allies and enemies can also see them. Passive and Item shops resemble those in other modern AoS games. Every few levels, you still get free attribute points to put in STR/AGI/INT. On Attributes: * Strength still increases max HP and HP regen (10, 0.1), * Agility still increases Attack Speed and Armor (1%, 0.25), * Intelligence now increases Cooldown Reduction and Mana Regeneration. (0.1%, 0.1) Primary attribute still scales your AD. 1 Armor gives 4% damage reduction (necessary due to wc3 negative armor bug). All spells now cost some mana, even primary and offense/support spells. Base mana regen now exists. Ravens (item carriers, couriers) Remain in the game. Everyone gets theirs for free. They are INVULNERABLE and give NO VISION on their own. Spell Classes NUKE spells have been renamed to DARKNESS spells. Increasing Darkness still similarly increases their damage, but there is much less early-game scaling going on. For this reason, all NUKE counter mechanics are removed - ofc, Darkness damage can still be reduced by Spell Resistance. There are now new types of spells besides Darkness, each making up a class of abilities & item actives. Every spell type scales uniquely with a new stat called Spell Mastery, as described in the following list. Every spell also scales its Damage (and Damage only!) with Spell Power, which is similar to Ability Power in LoL. * DARKNESS spells: Focusing on overpowering single-target damage. Their Spell Power ratios are abnormally high. Increasing Spell Mastery means that casting multiple successive Dark spells reduces the victim's damage output by an increasingly larger % for a tiny (~ 2s) duration. (note: ~15% vanilla, ~35% on fully pimped) ** Focuses on items and passives which improve single-target and short-term damage, as well as increasing the mana pool. (BANISH item?) ** Examples: *** Black Mark: Single target - Reduces enemy attack damage and deals damage. *** Shadow Strike: Single Target - Initial damage *** Dark Bolt: Single Target - Stuns for a second, and damag (400psi). *** Offensives: Finger of Death, Poison Lance * HEALING spells: They heal you. * FIRE spells: Every Fire spell is an AoE-type spell. Increasing Spell Mastery increases the effective aoe range and grants extra damage at the center of the aoe effect (cone, circle, line, projectile + explosion). ** Fire builds excel at pushing and bigger fights. They shouldnt be very effective 1-on-1. ** Examples: *** Flamethrower: Channeling Cone - You cast fire in an area in front of you, damaging enemies as well as scorching the ground. *** Napalm: AoE DoT - You throw a napalm bomb at the target area, dealing some initial damage and a lot of damage over time. *** Immolation: AoE Self - You turn yourself on fire to radiate heat unto your enemies. Drains mana. *** Offensives: Fire Bomb, Breath of Fire * ICE spells: Every Ice spell slows the victim’s movement speed, attack speed, and spell cooldowns/casting times (multiple Frost effects stack). Some Ice spells can also freeze victims. When a victim escapes its frozen state, it may not be re-frozen for the next 10 (?) seconds. Increasing Spell Mastery leads to a better slowing effect and to a longer freeze duration. ** Ice builds should focus on items/passives which improve their kiting potential and damage to / bonuses from impaired units. ** Examples: *** Blizzard: Channeling Point Target - Calls down freezing Ice Shard Waves in an area, chilling targets to decrease their speed by 20% 25% 30% (+1% per 10 SM) and dealing 70 100 130 (+0.5 SP) damage per second over a duration of 6 seconds. High cooldown. *** Frost Bolt: Single Target - Deals 250 325 400 (+0.8 SP) damage and chills the victim, slowing for 30 40 50% (+1% per 5 SM). Has a 35% chance to Freeze the target for 1 second (+1 per 100 SM). Medium cooldown. *** Frost Elementals: Summon - Summons 2 Frost Elementals to do your bidding. Elementals chill targets on attack, decreasing their speed by 10% 13% 16% (+1% per 5 SM). Medium cooldown. *** Offensives: Breath of Frost, Frost Wave * BLOOD spells: Every Blood spell steals life back to the caster (spellvamp). Increasing Spell Mastery means better spellvamp (%-based). ** Blood builds should focus on effects which increase their self-heal, and on other effects which become stronger the longer the fight drags on. Also, dmg return. ** Examples: *** Steal Life: Single Target - Deals 200 300 400 (+0.6 SP) damage and returns 25% (+0.3% per 1 SM) as life to the caster. Low Cooldown. *** Blood Pit: Point Target - An invocation which transforms the targeted area into a Blood Pit, sucking 30 40 50 (+0.1 SP) life out of enemy units every second and returning 50% (+0.7% per 1 SM) as life to the caster. High cooldown. *** Blood Trap: Point Target - Sets up a Blood Trap in the target location. An enemy who walks into it will be cursed, leaving behind a bloody trail. A spawn of 6 Blood Fiends immediately rises to attack the victim from all sides and moves faster on the trail, healing you for 25% (+0.5% per 1 SM) of their damage. *** Offensives: Life Drain, Shadow Drain � * CHAOS spells: Every Chaos spell has a % chance to produce one of the extra effects. Chaos spells are hard to use because they target --RANDOM-- enemies/allies, and are as such bad near the lanes with living enemy/friendly minions. Increasing Spell Mastery increases the % chance of each proc on the Chaos spell. ** Chaos builds should focus on increased jungling potential, as they are not efficient in lanes. ** Examples: *** Chaos Swarm: Your regular Crypt Lord ultimate with 3 swarmers, without any attacking priorities on Heroes. Has a 33% (+1% per 1 SM) chance to spawn two extra swarmers. *** Call Upon Lightning: A series of chaos storms follow in your wake, centered at random locations near you. Storms have an indicator, appearing half a second before they strike. Along with your enemies, they can also damage yourself. 20% (+1% per 1 SM) chance per storm to instead center the closest enemy unit, hitting instantly. *** Outburst: Hits a random nearby enemy unit for abnormal damage. Has a 70% (+0.33% per 1 SM) chance to hit an additional unit with 50% of the damage. *** Strike of Wrath: Your next attack deals extra damage and has a 33% chance to steal the target’s movement speed for a few seconds. *** Demonic Leash: Summons 2 uncontrollable Fel Hounds which will chase a random enemy and, upon the victim’s demise, leave this dimension. Has 15% (+0.5% per 1 SM) chance of chasing the targeted enemy instead of a random one. *** Demonic Unleash: Summons a strong yet unpredictable demon close nearby who does his own bidding. Has an 80% chance to follow your instructions, otherwise, it attacks randomly (does not distinguish between your allies or your enemies). *** Riftwalk: Opens an unstable rift in space to escape, instantly transporting you to a point somewhere around your ability targeting. Has a low % chance to also teleport a nearby enemy hero with you. *** Unstable Blessing: Blesses a random nearby friendly unit (can be the caster) to gain additional damage and armor for a duration. Has a %chance to also guarantee another bless on yourself. *** Stun Ward: Summon a stun ward which stuns a random nearby enemy unit every 5 seconds. Has a 25% (+1% per SM) chance to strike twice (targeting different victims) in a short time. *** Offensives: [ todo ] *** Items: All the Orb passives. � * POISON spells: Every Poison spell puts a debuff on the victim, dealing periodic damage to it for a duration. Increasing Spell Mastery improves the rate, effectively increasing the number of ticks in the duration. ** ** Examples: *** TODO *** Offensives: Poison Quake, Black Spirit These spell classes are in the works, and more will happen -- unless there’s too many items needed for this to work (at least 3 items per spell class - including either a legendary or mystical or both). There also at least 2 passives associated with each spell class. Spell classes are mostly intended to increase versatility for NON-FIGHTER builds. Spell Classes which do not scale with SpellPower well (or at all) are also reasonable for Fighters. Randoming abilities Randoming heroes / skills has been replaced by the following: You are given a choice between 3 heroes that were randomly selected. After that, you are given a choice between 3 random offense spells, 3 random support spells, and 3 random pairs of ultimates. At any picking stage, you can also opt for a list of ALL possible heroes/spells, but this removes the gold bonus. In this case, you may of course pick any combination of ultimates as well. Ultimate skills: As mentioned before, you lock in your primary ultimate at 6 and secondary at 11. Each hero has a pool of 6 ultimates. You select your Kick-off / Prime Ultimate on Level 6 -- it can be chosen on any of the two spots. Secondary Ultimate is chosen on Level 11, and trails one level behind the Kick-off ultimate in the manner of 1/0 (L6), 2/1 (L11), 3/2 (L16), and finally 3/3 (L21). How will this game look for new players? Dota2 modding allows for true custom GUI setups. We’ll use this to set up an intro screen (seen by all) where you agree or disagree to be strongly guided in your choices as a player (can be turned off at any point in the game). Newbie guidance: May pick a preset HERO BUILD. One hero build per Hero, and includes Ability picks, items, passives, ability sequence. Sources of XP and Gold XP: A team gets shared XP on each creep death, but only if one of its players is in range of the kill. Close players gain a bit extra. Best explained in an example: Two players are near an enemy creep death which grants 100 XP. Both players gain full 100 XP each, and the remaining 3 allies gain 80 XP (80%) each. As always, each level requires more and more XP. XP rewards also hugely increase over time in an inflative fashion. Gold: A big portion of gold is earned simply through automatic gold-per-second. Each creep “worth X gold” yields shared gold to all the nearby enemy players. Every hero may gain at most X gold. Creep yields at max a bit under 2X gold. How this works in an example: Creep/Monster yields 60 gold. * if 1 enemy hero: he gains 60 gold (total 60) * if 2 enemy heroes: they gain 50 gold EACH (total 100) * if 3 enemy heroes: they gain 33 gold EACH (total 100) * if 4 enemy hereos: they gain 25 gold EACH (total 100) * if 5 enemy heroes: they gain 20 gold each (total 100) About ⅓ (perhaps ½) of each player’s income should come not from laning creeps, but kills + neutral camps/objectives. Gold rewards also increase over time, reminiscent of inflation. For example, creeps in early game would reward ~20gold, 10 minutes later 30 gold, 20 minutes later 42 gold, etc. This mechanic seeks to reduce the importance of early game gold disparity over the course of say, next 15 minutes. Killing the new ship/tree instantly rewards you with all the gold that you would’ve gained from that ship’s creeps (but now they won’t appear for X minutes so you can’t). Item Design There are 6 types of items, classified as follows: * Basic Attribute (items with attributes, no actives) * Tier 1 (made of 1-3 Basic items, attributes, active) * Tier 2 (made of Basic, T1 items, attributes, active, specific passive bonuses) * Legendary (made of T1 and T2 items, have improved specific passive bonuses as well as improved/combined active powers) * Mystical (made of Basic and T1 items, attributes, active and specialize your playstyle via specific passive bonuses) * Eternal (made by combining Legendary with dropped Jefe Item™) Early laning items Passive Design Passives are split into Passive Books: Attack, Magic, Defense, Counter, Commander. Each Passive Book contains multiple Passive Chapters. For a few non-final examples: Commander -> Summoning, Commander -> Auras, Magic -> Spell Augmentation, Magic -> On-Cast Effects, Defense -> Physical Resistance, Defense -> Spell Resistance, Defense -> Self-Healing. Defense -> Resistance, Defense -> Self-Bonus In short, Passive Books tell you the basic intent of your next passive, and its Chapters provide some intuitive build direction of passives inside. When a player is pondering over a new passive (remember: max 6 different passives), he sees a list of Books, opens one, and sees all its Chapters, and opens one of these. If possible, passives inside a chapter are presented so that you can quickly see in the UI whether the chapter is usually taken in early, mid, or lategame. Each Chapter provides a bonus for each passive you max out inside. Quick brainstorm examples: Summoning Chapter gives you +Summon Attack Power, Auras Chapter gives you increased range on all auras... etc. Such bonuses increase nonlinearly with each completed passive within the chapter. Judging from HoSK, a player is expected to select about 3 passives from 1 specific chapter and scatter the other 2-3 from all kinds of chapters (buildling some Defense or Counters on the side). Terrain, Map Objectives, Bases Main map has “only” 2 lanes (for now). Main base towers+main buildling (on each side) are replaced with a single stationary boss, who keeps casting skillshots to occupy the attackers (play Dawngate to see what I mean). Early Game In early game (first 10-20 minutes), mistakes (= deaths) should not be felt as an extremely bad thing. Players should have an incentive to constantly fight for objectives even if it means potential death. Since lanes would be much shorter, a walk from base back to lane would be relatively short. Hero Kill in early game awards tiny amounts of gold and no extra XP - but it does remove that hero for a time, giving you time to secure a more risky objective on the map. If there’s an un-even lane where one player is dominant against his opponent, the opponent can still acquire gold from lane minions near the safety of his encampment, and also kill some tinier map camps, earning himself gold, but not earning his team the secondary objective points. =Current unresolved topics= * what’s up with physical dmg heros’ diversity (is spell mastery only meant for mages?) * gold sharing, xp sharing, from where do you get most of your gold & xp? * can we somehow encourage players into different builds which are not only based on current enemy builds, but also on some random key elements on the map (for example, game instance - based astrology) * select the first 10+ offensives, the first 10+ supportives (and rename offense/support to better fitting names?) * early game item design * UI design for hero picking * How to make grabbing map objectives more intuitive to newcomers? * Is there any way to reduce/lighten the burden of knowledge presented by items? =�= =Unfinished ideas= Per-game sign bonuses Each game randomly makes certain hero builds better (most likely through items and passives). The idea is to make players adjust their builds according to the current game’s sign bonuses, so you have a hero-building puzzle to solve every single game. Note: the game is supposed to have a good number of counter mechanics just like HoSK, which means that even if some builds get predictably better, they will just get countered harder (enemies will commit more into their counters), if too many enemies follow the sign-affected builds. Items and passives would be branded under “categories”, so when you start a game and see the game-specific bonuses which buff some categories, you instantly know what builds get improved this time. 19.02.2019 1 Sun Sign & 1 Moon Sign per game. Sun signs affect actives based on their color (DARKNESS; FIRE; ICE;...) Moon Signs grant additional bonuses per your stats (secondary attribute boost). (health/regen/attack speed/armor/mana/mana regen/cooldown reduction etc) Example Sun Sign (actives) - DICE : DARKNESS / ICE Abilities have +8 levels (example: your hero is level 12, but your DARKNESS hero power has numbers as if level 20) Example Moon Sign (attributes/starts) : HEALTH REGEN is +50% effective, Armor is calculated at higher rate. Expeditions Suggestion To more intuitively show the players that map objectives are key, have periodic Expeditions which have an extra group of AI-controlled creeps assault an impending important map objective (accessible by both sides equally). =�= =Brainstorming sessions (A.K.A unsorted ramblings of design)= sept 20th 2014 we’re trying out 2 (longer) lanes at first. Lanes are noticably wider than in Dota2. More breathing room! heroes will be a bit bigger than the tiny ones in HoSK pushing lanes is in general achieved by killing camps which award you with extra minions on the closest for a duration, and not through classic tricks like the dota2 creep-pulling to stop lanes (which should not be possible). big boy + 2 soldiers + 1 archer per 1 wave (+1 extra minion periodically?) denying should not be very important since your xp/gold is not super reliant on the lane creeps. Denying could deny less than 100% of XP Outposts will be garrisons and not towers (that is, a small band of units to defend the outpost). You destroy the outpost by killing the whole garrison (which slowly replenishes and gets stronger later in the game) and possessing the outpost’s control point. Garrisons fall fast with quality pushing (with minions), are extremely dangerous when no friendly minions around (acting as a safe haven), garrisons repair through time even if you lose them (on your map-side), mid-garrison is capturable (capture point - you have to kill the garrison first). per each lane: one rax garrison, 2 non-rax garrisons, +1 potential center garrison if you control it in the beginning garrisons should be nearly unassailable (first 10 minutes at least), done through sheer number strength early game should feel closer to an arena game than to a lane pushing game - fighting around map objectives Main goal of first alpha is to make early game feel fun! lanes are long enough to hold room for battles between opposing garrisons oct 9th 2014 * Added unfinished Idea: Stamina * Passive Books/Chapters design included oct 14th 2014 * Added Expeditions suggestion * Added Items Burden of knowledge unresolved topic oct 24th 2014 * Resolved topic “can we somehow improve the mana resource system (Introduce Stamina)?”. The accepted direction: no Stamina, make Abilities harder to use efficiently, then the player will be reserved from spamming them mindlessly due to mana constraints anyway. For reference, here’s the last proposed description of the stamina system (rejected): ** Stamina Suggestion (scrapped) ** Suggestion: Introduce Stamina as a new hero resource, operating as a limit you have to play around mostly when casting spells (like mana) or with heavy/fast auto attacks. Stamina is a resource that you spend on every spellcast, and it is spent very fast, while also replenishing very fast. ** You can spend enough stamina to fall into a dizzy state, strongly slowing your attack speed and spell cooldowns, so you do not want to go there. ** Stamina is shown as a bar (like your Health and Mana!) so you can keep good track of its state. Max Stamina cannot be increased in-game, it’s the same for all heroes. Stamina fully recharges in about 3-5 seconds (this simply needs testing to see what feels good in practice). ** To bring theorycraft into it for a bit, it is meant to discourage super-bursty casts of all your spells at once - you simply cannot do that even if you have the mana. Whenever you feel it’s a good time to cast some spells, you have to choose a portion of them which you wanna cast quickly. ** Stamina is not simply a thing meant to burden casters. It can also burden auto-attackers on their builds. Auto-attacking by itself is not supposed to affect stamina by much, and a hero without items/passives should always be able to continuously auto-attack. However, a lot of the passive on-hit bonuses would require some fixed extra stamina to come into effect. This means that very fast auto attackers need to watch out not to invest too much into such bonuses, and should be more comfortable with bonuses which do not spend extra stamina (like vampirism, crit effects), or spend it in very low numbers. Designer-wise this opens up new space for totally OP on-hit bonuses which only the slow attackers could select since they’d be able to sustain the required crazy amounts of stamina per 1 attack. ** Fast auto-attackers can still combat this through Agility, since Agility would now also bring some extra bonus to Stamina regeneration. This also improves the (previously worst) form of attribute synergy, which is AGI+INT, as opposed to STR+INT or STR+AGI. apr 18th 2015 * Instead of putting points into attributes, you can have a separate decision tree. You can only put something like 3 or 4 points into this tree over your entire game. (like, levels 1, 8, 15?) At level 1, you decide between str/agi/int, and will gain a boost (per level) in that stat. At lvl 8 (?), you pick another point - for example if you picked str, you can now pick agi or int, or some subtree under STR (could put some passives over there, like strength of giant, a bonus to str attribute overall) * Hero abilities leveling removed! abilities level by themselves with your hero level. You still have to pick ultimates at level 6, 11. * Talent abilities leveling removed (that is - 1 point per talent only instead of 4), some very rare talents may scale with hero level. * Item shop: Based on LoL shop - build suggestions, filters, item upgrade display (intuitive showcase) * Since ability leveling has been removed, add a special Talent Chapter designed to upgrade your specific abilities (primary, offensive/supportive, possibly ultimates)